In post-war America, President Harry
Truman signed into law the Displaced
Persons Act of 1948, an emergency
measure that responded to the influx
of refugees searching for stability in the
aftermath of World War II. The law
planned to admit 200,000 displaced
persons, 2,000 Czech refugees, and
3,000 orphaned children. What is rarely
discussed in accounts of this law is that
World War II was, according to historian
Tara Zahra, a “war against children”
because of the unprecedented number
of young people separated from their
parents by deportation, ethnic cleansing,
and forced labor. 2 Some of these children
gained admission to the U.S. through
the 1948 Displaced Persons Act
either as eligible displaced orphans
or family dependents.

In 1942, the U.S. admitted its firstset of contracted Mexican nationalsknown as braceros through the MigrantLabor Agreement negotiated withMexico. From 1948 to 1964, the U.S.admitted approximately 200,000braceros a year to fill agricultural laborshortages. According to Mae Ngai,“while young adult men comprisedthe backbone of the labor force, children, older men, and women worked illegallyas supplemental labor.” 3 Though it was illegal for contracted braceros to bring theirfamilies with them to the U.S., children of migrant farmworkers managed to workin fields as agricultural laborers alongside their parents, but are paid little attentionby academics.

More recently, from the late 1970s to the 1990s, civil wars in Central America
precipitated the outflow of hundreds of thousands of people. 4 Most books about these
wars do not shed light on the fact that, in late-twentieth-century Nicaragua, El Salvador,
and Guatemala, children outnumbered adults. 5 The focus of scholarship on the topic
largely effaces the role of young people who witnessed and actively took part in these wars
through voluntary and forced conscription, and fled to the U.S. in search of safety.

Today, the two most visible refugee crises the U.S. faces have origins in Syria and
what’s known as the Northern Triangle of Central America. In Syria, the outbreak
of a civil war and the rise of the Islamic State have displaced millions. The U.S. will
admit and resettle 10,000 of these refugees. Of the 8,000 Syrians admitted into the
U.S. thus far, about 58 percent are children, according to the State Department and
Public Radio International. 6

In the summer of 2014, a record number of unaccompanied child migrants from
Central America’s Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — were
apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. These young people ran from violence, forced
gang conscription, and extreme poverty. Unprecedented attention was garnered by the
2014 surge of unaccompanied minors because, in the first few months of fiscal year
2014, more than 57,000 children arrived in the U.S. This number alone constituted
twice as many arrivals as the number who made it to the U.S.-Mexico border in all of
fiscal year 2013.7

Historically and contemporaneously, migrant children have made up and continue
to make up a significant portion of the major influxes of people to this country. The
decisions lawmakers in the U.S. make always affect the lives of young people. But
despite the magnitude and unique plight of immigrant children, U.S. immigration law
and procedure is as absent of a child-centered framework as history is; both history and
law pay scant attention to the immigrant child’s voice, agency, and experience.

An exception exists, in a way: Many undocumented, unaccompanied children in
the U.S. can gain legal permanent residency through a Special Immigrant Juvenile
visa. The SIJ classification is the only child-centered form of humanitarian-based
immigration relief in existence in the United States. Legislated in 1990, SIJ status
allows undocumented petitioners who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned to
obtain lawful permanent residence. SIJ status is achieved through a two-step process in
which a child’s attorney secures a dependency order from a state family or juvenile court
and then U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is petitioned for the child’s legal
status. The state entity makes the child welfare finding while the federal entity makes
the immigration ruling.

Legal scholars, however, have again and again revealed the counterproductive nature
of an immigration law like SIJ status. It perpetuates our tendency to occasionally
acknowledge the presence of immigrant children in the U.S. without addressing
their needs appropriately. SIJ status is afflicted by disparities in access, combative

Courtesy of the National Archives, item 6501896 — A Cuban
immigrant and her child look at an in-flight magazine as they
await takeoff for the United States in 1995.